P.I.E, or the Portland Incubator Experiment, is an ongoing experimental collaboration between Wieden+Kennedy and tech entrepreneurs. Based out of our Portland office, P.I.E's mission is threefold: innovate business models and create tech-fueled cultural disruptions, build platforms rather than one-off's, and act as a tech-entrepreneur accelerator and social hub. P.I.E's members are leaders in tech: engineers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, geeks, makers and do-ers. While a percentage of projects are geared towards W+K clients, its core spirit is entrepreneurial and it has incubated everything from audio indexing/parsing technology to a niche meat product fulfillment site (aka online bacon superstore).

Since April 1, 2004, W+K Portland has been conducting an experiment, disguised as a school, disguised as an agency. Its alias is 12, and every year approximately 13 creative people, mostly from outside the advertising industry, come to our Portland office for a year of collaboration, learning, sleepless nights and ad-making alchemy. Students may be writers, designers, filmmakers, musicians, robot builders, and the occasional recovering attorney. A rotation of W+K creative directors lead their tutelage and give students a unique perspective on the how's and why's of the way we work. W+K 12 operates as its own mini-agency, with both pro-bono and paying clients, but it also exists as a press, a film production company, an art collective, and whatever else the current 12'ers decide it should be.